Category: Tech

In technology class our recent unit was “fair game” and our task was to create a theme park in a game called Minecraft, We got a certain theme and we had to make all the rides/buildings match that certain theme, there were four different groups and they all had a section in the big theme park, My groups name was named the “Anpanmen” and our chosen theme was ” Welcome to the zoo” we mostly focused on the animals of the zoo for our theme park and i think we succeeded.

The video down below is a video of our section of the theme park it is a tour! enjoy:

while we were planning our theme park and how to design it, we made design specifications and I over all think we met alot of them but to be clear this is what we planned for our design Specification:

Theme:

essential: need animals/petting zoodesirable: entertaining safarimust not : include any other themes

I think that We really met this desirable specifications because our section of the theme park has lots of animals and has a real naturey environment which made it more zoo like, I don’t think we had any other themes to our section either so i think we passed all these very well.

General:

essential:wood matierial to build,desirable: for it to be entertainingmust not : displease the audience.

I also think this we passed too because we used a lot of wood to build the safari the petting zoo and the shooting range, the bumperhorses had some wooden fences and I think wood was one of the most common things we used in our theme park section. I thought it was pretty entertaining, but maybe the safari boat sometimes crashes if your not careful but otherwise the rides work well and they are fun!

Function:

essential : needs some sort of power source (red stone)desirable : some sort of tinker with the plugins or default settings, to make it more suitable for our rides.must not : not have animal abuse

Function I think we didn’t really meet because we had a shooting range and that has a bit of animal abuse, and we didn’t mess with the default settings to suit our theme park section, but we did use redstone so we met the essential but not the others ( desirable,Must not)

Quality:

essential: has to be fundesirable: should include cute animals,must not: include destructive mods.I think we met this specification because I think out theme park is fun and it has cute animals in it and it doesn’t include destructive mods to destroy everything.

Aesthetics:

essential: must look prettydesirable : Should have potsmust not : look grotesque.I think we did well here because I created animal sculpture things that made the theme park look more filled and cute and look like the theme, (animals ) and I aded flowers for the environment to look pretty.

INTERVIEW:

We asked 5 people In our target audience (age 6-15) questions on how they thought about our theme park and on how we could improve our theme park,

alot of the time the responses where the flow of the theme-park and how it didn’t flow well and in between the rides were all squishy and too close together,but then other comments said that the petting zoo and the safari was a bit boring, In my opinion petting zoos and safaris are kind of meant to be boring and its just a place where you look at animals ” living” but I think me and Ryouko put a lot of effort into making the safari and the petting zoo as ” Alive ” as possible ( Fun and interesting )

So I think if we had to do this project again we would improve the theme park by adding more space in between the rides and having a flow in the theme park, and making things more interesting and fun.

DESIGN CYCLE :

I think out of all the stages or process of the design cycle, Investigation, Design, Plan and create I think I did the best at create because I did well in actually creating the attraction because I saw what it looked like and how it was gonna be I was also good at plan and i think because my plan was good I did well on my create. In investigate what I did the best was getting information about the Game Minecraft. and writing down what the game was about,I think for investigate i could’ve improved on saying how the groups problems could be solved.Next in Design I think I did well designing the maps of the theme park but I think that maybe I should’ve made a more detailed giant map of the whole entire theme park.

For Plan I think I got a main idea of how to build a safari but something I could’ve worked on was explaining well on what design exactly to use to create my official safari.

I think for create I did well in making it look like a safari, but I could’ve worked on making more fun and entertaining.

Conclusion:

I think throughout this project I worked really well with my group, The members in my group were all nice and i think we collaborated and cooperated really well.My role was peacekeeper and i’m glad I chose it and i think i did well,although we were good so we didn’t have many fights or disagreements sometimes the leader (Aitor) would disagree to something Ro – ( past creative person ) would’ve said, and then I would have to just help them figure things out, but otherwise we didn’t really have any fights or disagreements.

I really enjoyed this unit and I really wish to do something like this again in technology class because its a game and its fun while you learn the process of the design cycle or phases ( Investigation, Design, Plan and create ) ! I think that maybe if we had to change something in this project they could have more varieties of rides and themes.

In technology class we made a digital story and you can watch it HERE and here is the reflection 🙂

1. Reflect on how well your digital story met the essential and desirable specifications you wrote for yourself when you did the peer assessment compared to how well you met these goals after the video was complete.

I think that I met A lot of the essential and desirable specification, Because I had a few comments while doing peer advice They told me that I met a lot of my desirable specifications, such as “I’d like to make my digital story effective to people.” my peers said that It was very effective to them emotionally and it made them sad.but they also said the music would be better if it faded and one of my desirable specification was “I’d like to match the music well,”

2. Reflect on your work during each part of the design cycle and explain areas for improvement with excellent detail and supporting examples.

I think of all the steps in the cycle, Investigate, Design,Plan, Create and Evaluate I think I could’ve Improved most on Plan because I made a timeline on when to do things such as filming and Drawing, and I did not follow it, but then when the due date was soon I panicked and I started editing my timeline and split my time into reasonable sections so i could do my digital story well but fast. So I think next time I make a timeline I should Follow it 🙂

I feel like Create was My strongest because I created my digital story well in a short amount of time, and I made the story effective to people emotionally and I met most of my Desirable specifications. Maybe next time I should give myself more time so I can make my whole Digital story better.

For investigate we looked at a couple digital stories and recorded what made them good, I think this was very important because I got an idea of how to make a good digital story, and afterwards while creating my digital story I made sure on putting in the good techniques and etc. these are some examples of what makes a good digital story :

the pacing of the pictures were good and easy to see,

the smooth transitions between the pictures

the voices were loud and clear

Designing was very interesting but I think I didn’t do it very well because my storyboard was not very clear and I added more slides that I had not drawn in my storyboard because my digital story was not long enough,and maybe I should have drawn more to the storyboard but I forgot to do that…

“How can we use media to communicate our stories?”

I think That we can communicate our stories in many ways but social Networks,Videos and Blogs are probably the easiest and the biggest places we could share our stories.

In this Part of the Unit We have been doing the design section and we have been Planning how to Make a Good Tutorial and what Good tutorials Have,We have Created a Storyboard so we Know Roughly What We are going to show in the Tutorial,We also made a timeline so we know what to do things and plan things so we would Be able to do it by the due date.

I think I reached the Criteria Simple Because My Storyboard Was Not All Messy and Too detailed but it had a rough idea of what to do, Zoom because I zoom up to see the Pictures a lot so the Audience can See What Iam drawing clearly and lastly i think i reached the criteria Step by step because I show and explain everything really clearly with each step I draw.

My Audience Will Understand Exactly What to do because I have tried to Reach all criteria’s and planned it well so it would be easier for the audience to learn how to draw,My tutorial is good because It explains well and it is easy to understand.

I think that we have learned most of the things we need to know to make a tutorial, so I think we don’t need to learn anything more.

I really like this unit because I love Making Videos,So I am very excited about making the tutorial.I hope you enjoyed reading this blog post and I hope you watch my tutorial.

In technology Class we are going to make our own tutorial but first we have been looking at other peoples tutorials and saying what was good about them,We picked a couple of video’s and then wrote what was good about them and what was bad about them.

After that we picked our favorite tutorial then we posted it on our blogs with a little description of why it was good.We had to go to other students blogs and commented on other students favorite tutorial, I Have commented onSaya’s, Emma’s and Sho’s blog.I learnt a lot from their tutorials,I learnt how to make popsicle soaps,how to draw homer simpsons and how to beat box,I learnt the good’s and bad’s for making tutorials too. Like having to put it at a good angle and to not block the camera.We made a list of bad things to NOT do in our own tutorials.

First of all My favorite tutorial was a video,there was sound,music and movement.My own tutorial had step by step instructions and my favorite tutorial drifted off to what some of the body parts were called.My favorite Tutorial and My own tutorial Both had arrows showing where things where so the viewer could easily see what to do.my own tutorial had written instructions when My favorite tutorial had a voice tellling the viewer the instructions I want to know how to make the video’s or presentations in fast motion so the viewer does not have to wait and watch until you are done.

To Conclude I learned a lot about how to make a great tutorial and I found out so many interesting things.I hope we could do activities similar to this more,Because I really learned a lot and I enjoyed It.